To perform their analysis, the researchers set a base consumption level of salt that would count towards a “salt-related” death. That consumption level, however, is 33 percent lower than the Food and Drug Administration’s recommended daily intake for at-risk people (1000 mg in the study vs. 1500 mg recommended by the FDA) and less than half of the daily intake for regular adults (2300 mg). Since essentially nobody eats that little salt, this means that the researchers could use statistical methodologies — which we can’t see, since the manuscript is unpublished — to attribute at least a portion of basically any heart disease-related mortality to salt.

With activists swirling around food ingredients and arbitrarily categorized products for taxation and regulation on the grounds that they are purportedly “toxic” or “addictive,” expect this sort of “political science” to become more prominent. Agenda-driven researchers who want to control food based on the model of alcoholic beverages will stop at nothing to scare the public about food and scare governments into invading every kitchen, grocery store, and restaurant in the nation so we can live boring and tasteless lives.